The term "cutting corners is defined as meaning: "to take shortcuts; to save money or effort by finding cheaper or easier ways to do something." With this art piece, I wanted to play on those words in a slightly skewed way. I started saving cancelled stamps in 2001 because it seemed inevitable that the U. S. Postal System would surely decline in the coming years with the introduction of email and other means of electronic communication. Of course, the price of postage went up and up and up, while the quality of service plummeted.

I have always been fascinated with stamps as tiny works of art. So I am presenting this collage of stamps on an over-sized "stamp corner." It extends from the gallery wall a couple of inches with the intent of making it truly larger than life. I also wanted to point out that while mail service may not be as popular as it once was, it will continue for some time, jutting into the future.

But the small "installation" needs something, something hanging from it. Something hanging in the void that exists in the negative space of the southwest half. What better bit than a pen? It seems I never have one when I need it! And what a great exemplar for the dying art of writing? So now I am in search of the perfect writing implement(s) and a way to hang it (them) from my artwork in a manner that will allow it (them) to remain functional and still retain its (their) aesthetic appeal.

Deep breath...

Or maybe that isn't what this installation needs. Perhaps a magnifying glass? I want the piece to be interactive. I am frustrated at every art show I attend (not just at Gallery 211) that the viewer is a passive participant. Maybe if there was a magnifying glass hanging there, the viewer would pick it up and use it to view the lovely stamps?

Since my compulsion has nothing to do with the sale of this item, but merely with play, mayhaps we could just attach the pen to it that is used to sign the guest register at the All American Show?

Truth be told, I have worked myself into an absolute frenzy and needed the daily deliberation of my blog to comfort me. Oh, there is an installation! And I do want to hang it on my wall. And I would appreciate your feedback.

I hope my friends are well and that you had a productive meeting Wednesday.

"Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive."
​Mel Brooks

I spend a great deal of time on this blog each week, usually. I have had to back off a bit for a few days to get myself caught up on my painting, and sometimes I have to immerse myself in a different way to make that happen.

But I wanted you to know that I took a risk last week--I attempted to practice what I preach at you day after day. And here is an excerpt from the response I received:

Dear Cheryl,

Thank you for your submission. We look forward to reading your poetry.

Our reading time averages 2-6 months, sometimes longer. When we've reached a decision, you will hear from us by email. We appreciate your patience as we read and respond to everyone's work.

Sincerely, The Poetry EditorsThe New Yorker

So, I am pretty excited! Of course, my dream is that The New Yorker will publish my work, but right now I am pretty pleased with myself for risking absurdity. As Christi would say, "It is time for the HAPPY DANCE!" Alas, I am not much of a dancer, so I will share one of my favorite dance videos:

Now the waiting begins. My only solution is to stay busy, so I have started a new project! Imagine that! After posting the "Painting a Day" project of Duane Keiser last week, I was inspired to start my own version of this endeavor. Instead of selling the work on eBay however, I will let it accumulate it for a few months and have a sale, probably in the fall of this year. All works will be 6" x 6" and will be priced very reasonably, probably about $20.

I am planning to use this venture as a daily art meditation and experimentation. I am a big believer in visual brainstorming and in working on studies before starting a larger piece. Instead of tossing these studies, I will make them a little more finished out and sell them. I have done this sporadically in the past, but I like the structure of doing something each day. And after all, if I can take time to drink coffee each morning, I can set aside 30 minutes to make a "mini."

"It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen."-- Herodotus

STANLEY DOES THE HAPPY DANCE! by Cheryl Hicks 1" x 9"

So, keeping it short today. Back to work. See you soon.

"I'm not saying that everyone should swim with sharks, but sometimes you have to jump over your own shadow in order to learn something that you will never forget for the rest of your life. Then you know you can conquer your fears."-- Heidi Klum

"One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain."--Bob Marley

Sometimes at the Hicks house, a night out translates to a night in, with some good music and a couple of glasses of fine wine. As we visited tonight, I realized, for about the tenth time today, that I don't have time to visit or imbibe! I have a stack (translated as more than three) commissions that are due this next week! Good news and bad news... Yes, I will get them done on time, and no, I will not be doing anything else for a few days... Not writing, and not prodding you to write!

The picture I have posted is in my living room. It is DJ central in Cheryl Land. This is where I play the music of my life. You will note the huge painting of Steve Poltz which adorns my wall. This is from a few years ago when we had bands regularly playing at the Image Warehouse. And for each show we would make a hand painted sign that advertised the artist. This is the only one I kept.

For those of you who are not familiar with Poltz's music, he co-wrote "You Were Meant For Me" with Jewel, as well as many other musical jewels. See video below:

So, since I won't be "here" to push and pull you to write, I am leaving you my play list. This is what I will be listening to as I work. If you care to and dare to share your own play list with me, I am pretty sure I would enjoy it, too.

I have not previewed all of these videos. Some of them are undoubtedly enticing, while some of them are comprised of lyrics and nature scenes. No matter. It is the music that counts. So--wash, rinse, repeat, because I have only provided you with limited listening pleasure! And, so sorry, but I could not figure out how to link everything into a continuous loop, so just feel free to pick and choose... Also, please keep in mind that I was a child of the seventies...

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Ludwig van Beethoven

"Miracles happen everyday, change your perception of what a miracle is and you'll see them all around you."--Jon Bon Jovi

Hint: The word of the day is "everyday." (And the references are all printed in periwinkle for Paula.)

​A couple of days ago, I posted the work of Duane Keiser. I came across him while scanning through some of Robert Henri's paintings. In other words, I went off on a tangent! Never hesitate to do this. You can't begin to predict where you will find yourself. Pun intended...

Anyway, I discovered that Duane Keiser is a successful artist, quite successful, and also known as the guy who makes and sells "a painting a day." He started this series of small paintings, usually measuring about 6" or 7" in their largest dimension, in 2004, and continued for about a year and a half before slowing down. And he is still doing it, just not every day. Keiser started the project because he realized in the early 2000s that the internet was the gallery of the future. There is an interesting article at the Huffington Post. (Click on the image of his Krispy Kreme donut painting to go there. Note the actual model for the painting resides on the lid of a donut box to the left of the easel.)

KRISPY KREME (60" x 60") by Duane Keiser

Keiser describes this series on his website:​"My 'A Painting a Day' blog is a series of observations pulled from the onrush of the everyday. It consists of postcard-sized paintings of the places, people and things in my life. My subject matter tends to be those fragmentary passages that reside within the mundane-- the in-between spaces of our lives that we see but often do not notice. For me, these paintings are about the pleasure of seeing; of being cognizant of the world around me and pushing to find an alchemy between the paint, my subject and the moment. I view each piece as being part of a single, ongoing work."

He sells this work via eBay, which he says has proven to be an efficient, secure and transparent auction system for his collectors. Bidding starts at $100 and prices have ranged from $100 to $3,750 per painting. Here is a little slide show of his primarily postcard sized "Painting a Day" pieces:

Keiser's most recent post was titled "Bouquet" and is dated 5/19/16. It is still for sale on eBay and the bidding is currently up to $298.00.

"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."--Albert Einstein​

I bet you've already guessed where this is going

Yeah. If Duane Keiser can paint a painting a day, why can't you create a piece of writing every single day?

Keiser would be the first to tell you that not all of his paintings are masterpieces. Sometimes they are just studies that he views as a part of a progression, a process that he is working on or working out. Sometimes the small pieces become the large ones. For example, he painted a small chocolate donut and sold it on eBay long before he was inspired to paint "Krispy Kreme."

Maybe for Keiser his small daily paintings are like your journal entries? What if you made such fabulous journal entries, however, that you could tear them out and sell them on eBay?!?!?!

Now, I realize that this goes against at least two tenets I have pounded into your heads since day one of our writing group: Do NOT edit yourself, and do NOT tear pages out of your journal! But you also know that I truly believe that rules are made only to be broken. If I thought I could write a poem every day and sell it on eBay, I would be on my way to Office Depot to buy a box of envelopes right now!

"It's your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don't take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humor in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver."--Betty White

And why not write a poem every day or paint a painting every day? And why not sell them on eBay? Imagine selling poems on eBay!!! Isn't it important just to go through the motions? To prove to yourself that you believe in yourself?

“Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.” ― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

If you have seen me lately, you know that I have been letting my hair grow. My husband told me yesterday that he liked it and I said, "Yeah. I look sort of like a demented Doris Day!"

When I look back at the photo of me from age five, (and a few subsequent self portraits as they appear in today's blog) I see a pattern emerging... I guess some things never change.

And as for writing, childhood, and our ongoing connections and reflections, contains a wealth of inspiration! So today I am considering how my own childhood has guided my writing, and I am looking at what other writers have to say on that topic.

For example, I love this passage of poetic prose by Nicole Krauss from The History of Love:

“Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered, and everything was possible. A stick could be a sword, a pebble could be a diamond, a tree, a castle. Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field, from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was queen and he was king. In the autumn light her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls, and when the sky grew dark, and they parted with leaves in their hair.

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”

(I have not read this particular novel, yet, but Nicole Krauss is the author of Man Walks Into A Room, which I have read and can recommend.)

MY INNER CHILD EMERGES from the Inkblot Series by Cheryl Hicks

And, oh my, what about this passage from Boy's Life by Robert McCammon?

“You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don’t recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves.

After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm.

That’s what I believe.

The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something but you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you “sir.” It just happens.

These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I’m going to be when my journey winds down. I need the memory of magic if I am ever going to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you.”

AMBIGUOUS SPEECH BUBBLE by Cheryl Hicks

And this by Tom Stoppard from The Coast of Utopia:

“Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature's highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and willfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we're expected! But there is no such place, that's why it's called utopia.”

THE NARCISSISTIC ARTIST TURNS HER BACK ON HIGH DRAMA by Cheryl Hicks

I am not posting these passages to get my reader to agree with them, but instead I want the focus to be on the language itself. How are the passages constructed? Are they effective? Logical? Simple? Complex? Beautiful?

When I was doing my usual visual romp today, I came across this short, well spoken video:

I may not agree with everything it says. It definitely simplifies the situation. But I like the conclusions it draws. The narrator says, "It is a sobering situation that calls for humility, forgiveness, a constant vigilance over one's own conduct, polite warnings to others, and a very black sense of humor."

I especially like the phrase and the idea of "a constant vigilance over one's own conduct." It holds me accountable and offers me hope.

DISGUISED AS MY MOTHER by Cheryl Hicks

I do use my childhood as a source of inspiration for my writing, and I definitely find it to be cathartic. Here is a dramatic example.

FORCED ENTRY
by Cheryl Hicks
​
My darker self says
life is usually about not
getting what you want.
​Like being born.
It’s never a matter of choice,
but for some, the retrospective self
tries repeatedly to wish it away.

Mostly I try not to think about it.
Or about my older brother
who lived three days.
Or about the fact that I was born
less than a year after he died.
Or about the stories I’ve heard
about my father’s fingerprints
on my mother’s neck
as she went into premature labor
on a wet day in late October.

My brother will never have a book written about him.
He lived no stories and he had no name.
So I am writing about him today,
about wanting to feel close to him,
like the space of one minute on the clock face
must be close to all the others,
no matter how minute the connection
at the center of the circle remains.

Today I am pretending to be his replacement;
pretending that I once burst out of a wasted womb
and onto the scene like an enthusiastic stand-in.

And today I am making stories--
enough for two people.

​

Life has enough challenges...

﻿If I were going to issue a challenge to my readers today, it would be to use your childhood in your writing--even if only in your journal.

In Closing

People get crushed like biscuit crumbsAnd laid down in the bitumen.You have tried your best to please everyone.But it just isn't happening.No, it just isn't happening.

from Black Swan, Thom Yorke

Note: Perhaps of interest, the black swan theory is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on an ancient saying which presumed that black swans did not exist, but the saying was rewritten after black swans were discovered in the wild. The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Wikipedia) This is a book which has fascinated me for months now.

Today I have no preconceived plan for my blog. Probably because I slept well last night, so I didn't spend my slumber hours thinking as I sometimes do. So let's just see what unfolds and how we can connect the dots between the things we encounter...

I got up early, ran a few errands and came to the gallery to work a couple of hours before opening time, because it is quiet and raining. One of the places I went this morning was the post office to pick up a couple of packages. One of the packages was this book: The Art Spirit by Robert Henri.

I was drawn to the book because of the painting on the cover when I saw one of my fellow artists reading it at the gallery last week. Already, right after opening it for the first time, I am hooked when I read this:

"There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. If one could but recall his vision by some sort of sign. It was in this hope that the arts were invented. Sign-posts on the way to what may be. Sign-posts toward greater knowledge."

​And as I am reading this, there is an art installation in the making that is hovering over my right shoulder. Hmmmmm.....

Having thought that I was not particularly familiar with the paintings of Robert Henri, I was surprised that I did indeed recognize a few of them. And though as an artist, I do experiment in a lot of genre's, I think of myself primarily as a portraitist, so I was definitely drawn to Henri's faces.

It is actually a source of constant surprise to me that I paint so many portraits, because I find them to be the most difficult thing to paint! I can definitely connect with this statement by Michael Jordan: "My attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength."

With regard to Henri's portraits, I am in thrall with the looseness of his painting style and hope to impact my own work in this manner. For example, I started a portrait of JFK today. It is a commission which will be created from the text of Profiles In Courage and is based on this photograph.

Since my client wants it to be in black and white, I will not be experimenting with color, but the process of laying down text and painting over it will allow for a bit of play with value.

And since I am already cutting up the book, and since the next show at Gallery 211 is "All American," I have decided to create an additional painting of JFK. The second one will be in color. Here is an example of my last JFK portrait during its various stages of completion:
​

And since even this portrait is painted in black and white with the only color being in the background, I think I will try some of Henri's techniques and employ some unexpected colors in my new portrait.

A Confession

As the sometimes reluctant "teacher" of our Wednesday evening writing group, I am constantly issuing "challenges" to the participants. My confession is that I do not have a bag of tricks, a depository of proven tactics for getting my "students" to write. I just come up with ways to push their buttons. This is exactly what I do to myself when I am trying to get myself to write or make art. I push myself into areas of discomfort, innovation, surprise, familiarity--wherever I can think to push. I listen to all kinds of music, look at all kinds of art, read all kinds of books, cook foods I have never cooked before--anything I can think to do to push myself.

Today, while listening to Radiohead on Pandora (which is where the lines from Thom Yorke came from to start my blog today), I came across Telepopmusik. You are probably familiar with this song of theirs:

I looked at the paintings of Robert Henri, learned a little about the Ashcan School of Painting (Henri was considered by some to be the father of this movement, so you can click on his nude to learn more), looked at some art by Duane Keiser (which included watching a very cool three minute video of him painting the yolk breaking out of an egg), read several articles in Architectural Digest (I admit I mostly do this to look at the art on the walls...), got caught up in the writing of John F. Kennedy as I was cutting up Profiles in Courage (click on his book for excerpts from his library), and found a promising recipe for Low Carb Chicken Garam Masala (the recipe is linked to the photo).

It has yet to be determined how today's travels will impact my writing and my art... but they will.

And Finally, the Challenge

My way of challenging you today is to encourage you to just take some time and push yourself into experiencing things you probably would not experience. Do something that if others learned of it, would surprise them! Think things you have never thought before. Then write about them.​

I will close today with two things, and neither of them is a challenge, per se. First is a recording of Billie Holiday singing "The End of a Love Affair." If there is a challenge here, it is that the recording is almost ten minutes long. That is because, as Holiday gets going, it becomes clear that she is somewhat inebriated and having trouble staying in synch with the music. Apparently this was the last song of the day's session and she had been drinking a clear liquid all day, thought to be water, which was in actuality vodka. This album, which was re-released in 1997, is considered to be one of her best. I am not suggesting that her use of alcohol was the reason for the album's success. I find it to be amazing that she could function at all under the circumstances and I am enthralled by the music. You won't regret listening to it.

And the second item of closing is this lovely metaphor by Dwayne Johnson:

"I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn't open. The only thing I had was cracks. I'd do everything to get through those cracks--scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it's as big as a garage."

"When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not."--Georgia O'Keeffe

Very few things are as subtly exciting as a new idea! It is surely what artists and writers live for. Well-known author Ursula K. Le Guin says, "The more I think about the word “idea,” the less idea I have what it means. … I think this is a kind of shorthand use of “idea” to stand for the complicated, obscure, un-understood process of the conception and formation of what is going to be a story when it gets written down. The process may not involve ideas in the sense of intelligible thoughts; it may well not even involve words. It may be a matter of mood, resonances, mental glimpses, voices, emotions, visions, dreams, anything. It is different in every writer, and in many of us it is different every time. It is extremely difficult to talk about, because we have very little terminology for such processes." (www.brainpickings.org)

Even though Le Guin acknowledges the difficulties of even discussing ideas and their origins, she offers these five elements, or patterns, which she sees as being necessary to produce great writing:

The patterns of the language — the sounds of words.

The patterns of syntax and grammar; the way the words and sentences connect themselves together; the ways their connections interconnect to form the larger units (paragraphs, sections, chapters); hence the movement of the work, its tempo, pace, gait, and shape in time.

The patterns of the images: what the words make us or let us see with the mind’s eye or sense imaginatively.

The patterns of the ideas: what the words and the narration of events make us understand, or use our understanding upon.

The patterns of the feelings: what the words and the narration, by using all the above means, make us experience emotionally or spiritually, in areas of our being not directly accessible to or expressible in words.

To read more about these components and the necessity of them being balanced, click on the photo of Le Guin to open the article in a new window.

​T. S. Eliot sees the creative process involved, for example, in writing poetry, to be the result of a kind of breaking down or negative force. He says:

"That there is an analogy between mystical experience and some of the ways in which poetry is written I do not deny … though, as I have said, whether the analogy is of significance for the student of religion or only to the psychologist, I do not know. I know, for instance, that some forms of ill-health, debility or anaemia, may (if other circumstances are favourable) produce an efflux of poetry in a way approaching the condition of automatic writing — though, in contrast to the claims sometimes made for the latter, the material has obviously been incubating within the poet, and cannot be suspected of being a present form a friendly or impertinent demon. What one writes in this way may succeed in standing the examination of a more normal state of mind; it gives me the impression, as I have said, of having undergone a long incubation, though we do not know until the shell breaks what kind of egg we have been sitting on.

​To me it seems that at these moments, which are characterised by the sudden lifting of the burden of anxiety and fear which presses upon our daily life so steadily that we are unaware of it, what happens is something negative: that is to say, not ‘inspiration’ as we commonly think of it, but the breaking down of strong habitual barriers — which tend to re-form very quickly. Some obstruction is momentarily whisked away. The accompanying feeling is less like what we know as positive pleasure, than a sudden relief from an intolerable burden. … This disturbance of our quotidian character which results in an incantation, an outburst of words which we hardly recognise as our own (because of the effortlessness), is a very different thing from mystical illumination. The latter is a vision which may be accompanied by the realisation that you will never be able to communicate it to anyone else, or even by the realisation that when it is past you will not be able to recall it to yourself; the former is not a vision but a motion terminating in an arrangement of words on paper."

Indeed this is a lot to consider! But I understand what Eliot is getting at and must agree that sometimes the laying of the proverbial creative egg is quite a relief and often unexpected.

The best we can do as our minds are incubating the egg is to fuel ourselves and be ready to record the event!

Today's Challenge

In order to prepare ourselves for creativity, we must expose ourselves relentlessly to information, images, and ideas. And we must NOT be passive receptors. We must force connections among these elements and encourage the byproduct (theresultofanotheraction,oftenunforeseenorunintended) to germinate. One way to do this is to write in our journals.

So, my challenge to you is to write in a dedicated way in your journal at least ten minutes each day. And I dare you to set the timer for a longer period of time! What would happen if you wrote for thirty minutes? Why don't you try it? Try it instead of watching TV. Try it instead of getting on Facebook...

Try it.

Try it.

Try it.

I will close today with this:

"Because if you're trying to write and you have unlimited time, you can procrastinate an unlimited account, but if you have limited time, you rush to the page trying to get something down in the little bit of fragment of time that you have, and you may write a great deal that way."-- Julia Cameron​

"Standing as a witness in all things means being kind in all things, being the first to say hello, being the first to smile, being the first to make the stranger feel a part of things, being helpful, thinking of others' feelings, being inclusive."--Margaret D. Nadauld

The painting I am employing as illustration today is titled "Oversight." Surely no explanation needed in our current political atmosphere...

As I play today with the concept of witnessing, I am struck by how many varied meanings the word has. My series of bird paintings uses them as witnesses, sometimes reluctant or sarcastic, in varied settings. Here are a few:

And here is a snippet of prose that considers needing a witness to make sense of growing up.

CAN I GET A WITNESS?

One of my earliest memories is of a board book illustrating opposites. Big puppy. Small puppy. My brother was two years older than me and liked trying to teach me the secrets of the stiff pages. Up. Down. I depended on him a lot in those days; our household was always in a state of turmoil. Happy. Sad. And Mamma was usually glad to let him take charge of me. She always thought of me as being an overly sensitive child. Good. Bad. And she was afraid I spent too much time worrying about things that were out of my control.

My mother was a stunning beauty, the kind of woman you would expect to see on the cover of a magazine. I used to dream of being as pretty as she was. But I was also disturbed by the way her beauty came and went with her moods. When she was happy, she dressed the part in every way. She wore beautiful clothes, had the latest, most glamorous hairstyle, and adorned her beaming face with cosmetics. When she was sad, she looked like an impersonator of herself. She shuffled around the house in an orange caftan that floated uncertainly about her body as though reluctant to make contact with her washed out skin. Her wide blue eyes refused to sparkle, and the outer edges of her disappointed lids drooped under the weight of of her sadness. Mamma was sad a lot.

As the years of my childhood passed, I watched her as she tried to mask her sorrow. The photo albums in our den were filled with Easter pictures set on our impossibly green, sloping front lawn, carefully crafted photos of Mamma dressed in a costly pastel suit, with matching hat and gloves and handbag and shoes. She looked as lovely as a cover girl. And in some of the pictures she was really smiling—the kind of smile that is almost always followed by a little laugh. I could tell because her teeth were showing.

Not everyone knew it but Mamma hated her teeth. They were delicate, like a child’s teeth, and though they were perfectly straight, they had tiny spaces in between. She was self-conscious about them and always tried to hide the small gaps as though they were openings that would leave her vulnerable to invasion. I liked it when I saw Mamma’s teeth; it meant that she was really happy, so happy that she didn’t bother to hide behind a shuttered mouth.
​But in most of the photos, Mamma didn't really smile. Her eyes were unable to hide, for even the fraction of a second that it took to snap the Polaroid, the determined shadows of her desperation. I guess she was just stretched too thin to protect herself, and as the years went by she stopped trying, until the camera was put away in the hall closet, eventually becoming an obsolete model for which film could no longer be purchased.

"The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history."--Robert Rauschenberg

One of the biggest influences on my artistic life has been Robert Rauschenberg. This is perhaps because I once saw three museums filled with his work in Houston and it indeed impacted me immensely. This is one of the installations I saw that day. It is comprised of many real chairs (for which I admittedly have an affinity) housed behind a plexiglass wall which does not light up until the audience applauds. I really like the notion that the viewer must express appreciation up front!

I also saw Rauschenberg's "Mud Muse" that day. Seen here, it is a clear tank filled with mud. It has several openings in its base through which air is released, perhaps even forced, which created bubbles, tiny explosions, up through the mud. I'm not sure why I found it so interesting. I enjoyed the unpredictability of it, the sounds of the airways clinking open and closed, the sometimes volcanic sometimes subtle visual burps in the mud... And I liked the weird harnessing of that energy!

I was also influenced by Rauschenberg's "Quarter Mile" installation. It was simply a quarter mile, or two furlongs, of stuff. Some of it was artistic, and some of it just was.

I especially liked the stacks of books, no library pun intended, and was tempted at one time to create a four-poster bed made of books!

I encountered Rauschenberg's plenitude of artistic expression in the early stages of my own attempts to make art. Here is my first painting, titled "Adam's Choice." I am proud to say that it is featured on a bag produced by Bad Ass Backpacks, titled "Sincerity Inside."

Note: On this particular painting, I carried the image onto the reverse of the canvas--a practice I still engage in from time to time... So if you own a Cheryl Hicks painting, you might want to look at the back of it.

I am painting today, so keeping it short blog-wise, I will close with these words from one of my favorite vocalists:

"There's beauty everywhere. There are amazing things happening everywhere, you just have to be able to open your eyes and witness it. Some days, that's harder than others."--Sarah McLachlan

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."--T. S. Eliot

STAY GOLD by Cheryl Hicks, an example of "frenetic cubism", 36" x 36"

When I first started experimenting with cubism a few months ago, I was drawn to the concept because it seemed as though it took into account issues of time and space that my art had not previously considered. And it pushed me out of my comfort zone.

Sometimes I have to assure myself that no one cares about my art as much as I do, and therefore, no one is out there judging me as harshly as I judge myself. I repeatedly send myself the same message with regard to my writing.

​I am reminded of this poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

CONSTANTLY RISKING ABSURDITY

Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience the poet like an acrobat climbs on rime to a high wire of his own making and balancing on eyebeams above a sea of faces paces his way to the other side of day performing entrechats and sleight-of-foot tricks and other high theatrics and all without mistaking any thing for what it may not be

For he's the super realist who must perforce perceive taut truth before the taking of each stance or step in his supposed advance toward that still higher perch where Beauty stands and waits with gravity to start her death-defying leap

And he a little charleychaplin man who may or may not catch her fair eternal form spreadeagled in the empty air of existence

Ferlinghetti captures the kind of risk creatives take when exposing their output to the world outside their own being. Using the extended metaphor of the trapeze artist as writer, he makes me realize anew the performance aspect of sharing one's creative output, no matter in what form that sharing occurs.

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."--Elizabeth Appell

During our discussion last night, we talked about writing with our non-dominant hand as a means to reach aspects of our personalities that we might be sublimating. To someone with a highly logical mindset, this may seem frivolous. Perhaps it is that personality type which most needs to experience this.

After one member of our group shared a deeply emotional story, I suggested that it might be an effective tool to tell the story backwards. On reflection, it struck me that this might have come across as trivializing the experience, and I definitely did not intend this. I truly think that running the film in reverse when retelling a narrative episode can show things to the story teller that may have become taken for granted over time and with the retelling of the story.

Another strategy I have found to be helpful is to change a first person narrative to one in third person. It lets the storyteller venture outside herself and relate details and emotions from a somewhat detached perspective.

These are all just experiments designed to shake something loose from our ego protected selves. And there are a lot of risks involved here. We may fail to create something we deem worth sharing with the world. We may fail to finish what we started. Our audience may not understand or appreciate our efforts. We may reveal things about ourselves that we are hesitant to share. Or as Ferlinghetti implies, when launching ourselves into the void, we may fail to catch the metaphorical Beauty.

​

Perhaps by analyzing the parts of a metaphor, we can remove the fear of risk-taking involved in writing. Technically speaking, a metaphor has two parts: the tenor and the vehicle. The tenor is the subject (in the case of the poem previously discussed, the poet and the act of writing poetry), and the vehicle is the thing to which it is compared by borrowing attributes of that object. (As Ferlinghetti implies, writing poetry is as challenging as being a trapeze artist.)

I have discovered that the introduction of humor into the creation of metaphor can result in some interesting word play. For example, this painting of the black birds sitting on a branch looking down at the duck decoys is titled, "Speed Dating for Dummies." And maybe that only makes sense to me. It certainly wasn't what provoked me to paint the image. I was simply interested in what the black birds would think of the fake ducks, the tension frozen in that moment of observation.

Today's Challenge

In your journal writing today, create a few metaphors that compare emotionally laden situations in your life with something outside your self. If it helps you get started, make similes first. "This is like that..." or "when this happens, it is as though..." Then revise the simile into a metaphor and perhaps elaborate on the qualities that drew you to the comparison initially.

Perhaps in Ferlinghetti's journal, he started by writing, "When I try to write a poem, I feel like a trapeze artist launching myself into a physically dangerous territory." Of course, he revised this until he came up with a much more elegant conceit.

The beauty of metaphorical speech is that it allows the writer to sneak up on realization. For example, I once wrote in a story, "Her secrets were like weights tied to her and keeping her from flying." I was then free to explore not only the similarities of secrets and weights, including how to remove them, but what was the metaphorical equivalent of "flying."

If you are a highly logical thinker, it might be helpful to think of creating metaphors as moving from noumenon (the object, itself inaccessible to experience)to phenomenon (what the senses of the mind notice). Thus when we are trying to understand and describe something, we try to make it more accessible by comparing it to things we already have a grasp of.

​I will close today with this:

"Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down."--Ray Bradbury

"Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate."-- Sun Tzu

Is it necessary to be dramatic or outrageous to make good art or good writing? Or is this a tendency in our culture to overlook that which is subtle and more challenging? Note that to "overlook" something also has the meaning to give it the "evil eye." So perhaps turning a blind eye to that which is subtle and delicate is actually somehow ominous. I am reminded of Rumi's rumination on "The Lame Goat."

You have seen a herd of goatsgoing down to the water.

The lame and dreamy goatbrings up the rear.

There are worried faces about that one,but now they're laughing,

because look, as they return,that one is leading.

There are many different ways of knowing.The lame goat's kind is a branchthat traces back to the roots of presence.

Learn from the lame goat,and lead the herd home.

"Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness."-- Eckhart Tolle

I am the first to admit that I am a lame and dreamy goat. I often plod along in my own world, contemplating things around me, sometimes so intently that I forget where I started and where I hoped to end.

Sometimes, I am more deliberate though. For example, my series of paintings which include black birds are relatively simple on first examination, but they are actually composed with an eye to symbolic meaning. The hope is, as an artist, that these archetypes work on the viewer whether he or she realizes it in any active way. Here are a couple of examples.

One must consider when viewing a painting, that the viewer is impacted by many elements at once. This is a small painting (12" x 36") containing a lot of meaning. The composition of "Burning Desire" is not quite symmetrically balanced. While there are two birds, they do not have the same stance. Other elements, such as the skulls and flames, are also a bit off center. This slight shift off center creates a subtle tension and hints at the complexity of the painting's message.

The zebra print in the background of this piece is colored blue and yellow instead of the expected black and white. This is to illustrate that life is almost never presented in a clear-cut manner. Blue is the color most often associated with issues of the spirit and intellect. It is the color of sky and heaven, also having strong connections with nearly all forms of water. Thus it is connected with purity and cleansing. It traditionally has feminine, cool and reflective aspects. Its link to the sky also connotes eternity and immensity, time and space. Blue is often linked to truth and transparency.

Yellow often stands for light, the sun's rays, intellect, faith, and goodness. However, yellow can also be a sign of cowardice, betrayal, and/or jealousy. Because of the two distinct colors, the zebra print is often representative of duality, which results in a split personality with two distinct identities that compete for dominance.

Red, an emotionally charged color, is associated with war, anger, blood-lust, vengeance, fire, and the masculine. It can also mean love, passion, health, and arousal.

​

The black silhouette of the young girl is decorated with skulls on the skirt. This symbol is often associated with death and evil, but some ancient cultures believed the skull had the opposite association, that it represented the embodiment of consciousness in the human form.

​Most of the numbers in this painting are even: two birds, six flames on the chandelier, six red balls, and four skulls. The exception, of course, is the female figure, and in a lesser way, the light fixture, which is merely an extension of the girl, in that it represents her illuminating intelligence. Of course, the two blackbirds can be read as thesis and anti-thesis.

​The number four deals with stability and the grounded nature of all things. It represents solidity and calmness. It is the number of persistence and endurance. Note, however, that the four skulls are somewhat off center and that one is fractured. It is this very dissection that created the appearance that the skulls encircle the hem of the skirt. The number six signifies growth on the spiritual level. The fact that there are six candlesticks (representing the intellect) and six red balls (representing spirit) connects these two aspects of human consciousness.

And, of course, both are painted red, as is the fire, hinting that the three elements are somehow all connected. In an interesting aside, fire is the only one of the four elements that humans can reproduce themselves, so it is said to be the bridge between mortals and gods. Rituals often involve fire, and it is often a symbol of purification. It can even be a symbol of religious zeal and martyrdom. Freud saw fire as an aspect of the libido representing forbidden passions, but is also seen in psychology as destruction and regeneration.

(Here is another of my black bird paintings, titled "Get Back Jack." To read an explication of this one and get a glimpse at others in this series, click on the image to open a new window.​)

​It is my claim that all of the paintings in this series are symbolically laden. But can't this be said of all art? Whether the artist intended it to be that way or not? Can this be said of all writing?

Is this then the way the mind of a lame goat works, assigning ambiguity and symbolic meaning to everything it encounters along the winding path?

"Ay, there's the rub..."

I do not propose that there is a correct answer to these questions. I do, however, embrace the generative nature of the query...

Japanese writer Daisaku Ikeda says, "The reactions of the human heart are not mechanical and predictable but infinitely subtle and delicate."These are not easy observations to make, easy paths to chart. I recently read a passage by Wittgenstein wherein he proposed that the very use of language can lead the observer to become deaf to the embodiment of life, the very source from which our words derive their sense.

I do believe however, that the mere consideration of difficult ideas can result in small breakthroughs in thinking. And I have found that it is when I am writing in my journal, or attempting a new poem, or making a painting that these small epiphanies occur.

I especially like the way artist Conrad Hall uses a metaphor to recognize the similarities between making art and making writing: "There are infinite shadings of light and shadows and colors... it's an extraordinarily subtle language. Figuring out how to speak that language is a lifetime job."

Consider this: even the Stanley pencil has taken on another function... Not only has it united our group because we were all thoughtfully gifted with it, it has become a designated readymade work of art as it breaks up this online space allowing for a brief recess. It has become a small hollow in which we can rest our thoughts, preparing ourselves for the next onslaught.

I will close today with this:

"It's not only moving that creates new starting points. Sometimes all it takes is a subtle shift in perspective, an opening of the mind, an intentional pause and reset, or a new route to start to see new options and new possibilities."--Kristin Armstrong